Mario, Going back to your original post, I think you are being unrealistic.
First of all, on the question of amnesty. What is this “stiff fine” upon registration that you refer to? Is it really going to be so stiff that a low-income illegal immigrant can’t afford it? No. Not only would that be unfair (making the amnesty depend on financial wherewithal), it would defeat the purpose of the legislation which is to make currently illegal immigrants legal so they are brought out of the shadows. We aren’t going to leave them there for want of an ability to pay a fine.
As for back taxes, have we heard from the IRS how that is going to work? I have serious doubts about whether it will be administratively possible.
The bottom line is that most illegal immigrants will become legal almost on Day One and the rather minor hoops that they will have to jump through won’t change the fact that it is an amnesty. Marco Rubio calls the 1986 law that had similar hoops — paying a fee, proving good character, waiting for a green card — “a blanket amnesty.”
I think you are more or less right about the importance of E-Verify. It will be hard enough to get Washington to actually implement it in the best of circumstances, but it becomes that much harder if you have given away amnesty before it happens. Even if you support comprehensive reform, you should realize — and you say as much in this post – that the sequencing matters. Unfortunately, the Gang of Eight is starting out with the sequencing wrong and it will probably get worse from here.